


they were far, they were few, they were mine

by cptsuke



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Origin Story, Temporary Character Death, The Crusades and all that entails, joe | yusuf al-kaysani POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26593426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsuke/pseuds/cptsuke
Summary: another How They Met storyseveral somewhat connected scenes from Jerusalem's walls to the port of Haifa
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 20
Kudos: 113





	they were far, they were few, they were mine

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to @ignoredendgame on tumblr for being an amazing human being and checking my few qu'ran references 
> 
> (on that note, if i have missed the mark terribly anywhere else, please let me know, as while my intent is well meaning, that sometimes can be led astray by ignorance.)
> 
> anyway here's 8000 words of Joe being the beautiful, overly forgiving, poetic soul that he is, now im off to start a Nicky can't stop thinking about how amazing joe is story

The beginning, as far as Yusuf can decide, is also the end. The last time he slays the crusader that won't stay dead no matter how many times Yusuf bleeds him out.

Just this week they'd killed each other outside the city, then at the gates, fought on til the fighting had blurred to chaos, as the looting and burning started and the city's defenses finally shattered and broke.

Yusuf had lost sight of the crusader in the shift between defense and saving what people he could from the sacking; time shifting and stretching til Yusuf is nothing but his sword and the blood that spills when steel gives way to steel.

The sun is swallowed by the smoke haze of a hundred burning buildings, painting the streets and buildings every shade of orange.

Yusuf hears him before he sees him, a loud shout in Latin - _**WHY?!?**_ -and Yusuf turns to see the man he hasn't been able to kill, stumbling alone through the smoke, his words ripping out of his throat as he screams at the sky, the sound of it painful and raw.

_W_ _hy?_

Yusuf feels a twinge of kinship for all the times he's found himself asking the same question, himself and the innocents of this land caught up in the conflict like flotsam in the harsh crash of breaking waves.

Then his heart hardens, the view of the lone Frank appearing in the smoke reigniting Yusuf's rage and he doesn't stop to think why the man had was alone before they'd clashed together once more.

Perhaps this is the reason he's been born and reborn again on the battlefields leading him to Jerusalem. A curse or a blessing, it was all too late, killing the undying crusader won't stop or save anyone now. Yusuf is just one man with a sword, but a seemingly endless supply of life, perhaps if he can stop this one crusader, then he can rest. Leave this place of blood soaked sands and red streaked skies. Of screams and never ending atrocities.

“I don't, I don't understand, this isn't,” The crusader gasps nonsense words to himself, broken sentences, even as he brings his sword up to block Yusuf's, streaked in blood and seemingly at a loss for words.

“Is this not what you've done since you came to this land?” Yusuf snaps, interrupting his meandering words, because Yusuf has seen the devastation left behind, Yusuf's been caught up in this mess purely by misfortune of trading in the wrong port when the crusaders swept in and destroyed both his livelihood and any _q_ _â_ _rib_ that could have taken him home.

“No! Death on the battlefield, it's, it's _honorable_. There's no honor in this!” The Frank casts his gaze around, crying in earnest, an encompassing hopelessness filling his eyes. “This isn't what God would want, I don't understand, I don't-”

His counter strike is as poor as his words, and Yusuf presses his attack.

If Yusuf can kill just this one, did it matter? They've lost, Jerusalem has fallen, and soon, with what Yusuf's seen of the invaders, there won't be anything left of her but ashes.

There's no sense left in the world, _Allah_ , but he wishes he'd fled for homewhen they'd first swept through the land, he could have rebuilt his business, he'd have never died in the sands of a land that was so far from the shores he was born on.

He'd have never found himself alive again, never have found himself tied to this pale man who died and lived again just as unrepentantly as Yusuf. And they were tied, Yusuf could see that now, whatever had made them like this – magic? god's will? a curse? a blessing? - it had surely connected the two of them. There could be no other reason they found each other so unerringly on the field of battle, time after time, day after day, for all these months.

He's been killing this crusader for over a year now, he realizes, as his sword finds flesh and he feels - at the same time - the crusader's blade shove deep between his ribs. He falls with grime streak cloth gripped in his fist and his belt knife plunging with the other.

They hit dirt made mud with the blood they've shed. Yusuf kicks away, trying to find breath in lungs sliced in two. The Frank's already glassing over eyes stare sightlessly at Yusuf as he futilely labors for breath, his mouth moves with words too soft to hear – _i want to go home –_ then the sound of gurgling blood mirrors Yusuf's strangled breaths and he looks away. He doesn't want to see death strip away the tension in his face til all that's left is a young, scared man, he doesn't want to see the death of his own hopes and dreams in the now familiar pale face of this foreigner.

He looks back as the final darkness creeps into his eyes, the crusader is dead, but Yusuf has made no progress. Is he to continue this madness forever?

Once more he dies.

Once more he wakes.

This final beginning starts with the Frank curled over on the ground before him, Yusuf's knife still wedged in his back; caught on bone perhaps, breathing shallow as each breath brought fresh blood as the blade cut flesh anew. His last desperate attack before longsword had pared Yusuf from his life once more.

Yusuf had had the dubious honor of feeling an arrow slowly dislodge itself from the flesh of his arm earlier in the siege, and yet he'd had to remove a crossbow bolt from where it had struck deep in his thigh bone. He wonders if given enough time the barbed bolt would have also worked itself free from his body, but he doesn't care to experiment.

They know not how this undying life works, blood spilled still pains, they still hunger and tire as they ever have, but small wounds close almost before blood has chance to fall, and even a mortal blow would knit back together given enough time. Yusuf doesn't think about the smell of his own entrails or the sound of blood bubbling in the crusader's throat as he drowned in his last breath.

They heal.

All these painful miracles and more, at the end of long days of endless bloodshed and hardship, they hurt and tire just as much as any man.

Perhaps that's what stays his hand in the end.

Pure exhaustion.

All Yusuf knew is that his heart bled for the fighting to stop, for the city to know peace, for every foreigner to turn tail and run back to the sea; but most of all he wants to collapse on the ground and cry from exhaustion.

He doesn't understand this man in front of him, he's felt his blade more times than he likes to think about, there's never been any hesitation in his swing, and yet he remembers - like a dream - trying to get civilians out of yet another fallen town, dodging groups of Franks looking to swing their swords at the first warm bodies they came across.

Almost out, almost free, he'd found himself caught between a handful of knights that hadn't noticed him and the women behind him, and a lone crossbowman overwatching the exit Yusuf had hoped would be unguarded.

He'd frozen, he could fight his way out - no fear for himself - but unable to see a way out that wouldn't get some of the innocents behind him killed. Then he'd made eye contact with the crossbowman, recognized his sharp pale eyes, as he in turn recognized Yusuf, close enough to to see his eyes widen, flicker to the knights, to the people behind him, then back to Yusuf.

Yusuf had braced himself for the bolt that would surely go his way; if it didn't kill him outright, he could still save some of them. Yusuf's heartbeat had felt loud enough to alert every man in the city, an eternity passing, the two of them watching each other.

_What is he waiting for?_

Then the Frank's eyes closed, the crossbow steady in his hands even as he took a deep breath, his weapon dipped slightly and he'd studiously looked away.

He hadn't believed it, even remembering now he still has trouble believing that it wasn't just a fever dream brought upon by stress, he hadn't trusted but yet he'd had no choice.

They'd fled the city, past the man not watching them, expecting a crossbow bolt in the back, or a cry of alarm. Yusuf had turned to look back once they were safe, but the Frank – his Frank, the man he shared this terrible secret and multiple deaths with – wasn't looking at Yusuf, wasn't looking at his group of refugees, instead he'd been watching the knights, staring intently, his jaw tightly clenched.

Did it mean something?

Nothing?

The Frank hadn't actually done anything, but wasn't inaction in itself a chosen action? He'd consciously decided to let them pass unharrassed. Greater philosophers than Yusuf might have been able to answer the question, all he had was a single moment weighed against every other bloody encounter.

Yusuf hadn't known what to expect next time they crossed swords, but the crusader had fought just as fiercely as he ever had, giving no quarter, as if their previous encounter had merely been something Yusuf had imagined.

Yusuf's been fighting for _months_ , but more than that, he's been _dying_ for months. Since he'd crossed blades with this man - since they'd killed each other and come back to life - he'd died more times than he could count with both his fists, and just today, this last final stand, surrounded by long dead, the battlefront moved past as the two of them had slain each other and rose to slay each other again. His body isn't meant to feel all he has felt and keep going.

But yet it still pulls him back to living.

They'd torn themselves and each other apart again and again; ignorant of the tears that ran down their faces, trying to breath through ruined lungs and mindless prayers muttered under breath.

Even now he can hear hoarsely spoken Latin that he understands as a prayer that starts and stutters past coherency. Does his god listen to and hear broken liturgy? Or is it in itself purely by rote, the same years of comfort in repetition that bring Yusuf's own words to God to his lips?

He studies the man before him, eyes closed, squeezing tighter with an exertion of breath, his shoulders hunch up, flexing as if convincing himself up to rise once more. He does shakily, dragging knees forward til he's sitting over them slouched, breathing heavy with his legs folded beneath him; back still bowed, a tremor running through him.

Yusuf pushes himself fully upright, sword in hand but loose, low.

Ready, but not.

Yusuf walks close enough to reach out a hand, and it's stupid, stupid to get so close, stupid to reach out, stupid to change the shape of his actions after hours and days of the endless blood shedding.

But Yusuf has nothing more left in him, it feels like being ripped apart but to continue pursuing this useless slaughter; its senseless, pointless violence.

If Allah has revived him, then perhaps he had had a hand in the crusader's resurrection also. And if not, then surely it was still folly to continue trying to kill a man that beyond all rhyme and reason would not stay dead.

The crusader looks up, past Yusuf's hand, eyes wide, wet and fathomless as the sea that had brought him to this point, kneeling in front of Yusuf.

A delicate line of blood slips down his jaw; the only reminder left of when Yusuf had cut down to teeth and bone several deaths ago. The blood runs and is lost in the splattered gore where blood from wound meets the blood he's spilled.

Not that Yusuf is any different, every shift of his face flakes off dried iron. The two of them embodying the Frank incursion perfectly. Caked in gore and senseless in action.

Yusuf very carefully doesn't think that at this range, with that sword and the strength Yusuf has seen and felt in the crusader's broad shoulders, he'll lose his legs if the Frank lashes out now. Yusuf holds in a shudder at the thought and keeps his hand steady as the other man studies him.

A test of sorts for both of them.

Are Yusuf's actions true? Will the man reach out only to be struck down once more?

Is it true what Yusuf thinks he sees mirrored in the other's eyes? A bone weary tiredness? A depletion of soul? The desire for this bloodshed to end? Or is that just what he wishes to see?

Whatever the christian is looking for, he must find, his hand crossing the distance and grasping Yusuf's.

He pulls him upright with newly healed muscles, til the crusader is standing but slouched over, Yusuf's knife still in his back. He reaches without thinking, yanks the blade out with his free hand. The other man startles backwards, his sword rising, though not as fast as he had in the past, hesitant with wide eyes darting between Yusuf's face and the bloody knife in his hand.

“Peace! Peace!” Yusuf calls in Sabir, hands out front, letting the knife drop to the dust.

Light eyes flicker from the dropped knife and settle back on Yusuf's face.

“Peace?” the Crusader repeats, his face creasing in confusion as he sounds out a repeat of the word, fingers flexing on the hilt of his longsword, one twice, three times, before they pry themselves free and reach back towards Yusuf's hand. “Peace.”

“Yusuf.” He says, his free hand pressed against his chest, and the crusader repeats it poorly, _Josef._ He frowns and tries again.

_Yusuf._

His accent still twists the vowels, changes the familiar sounds of Yusuf's name to something distinctly foreign, but the intent is there. Perhaps, in time, his sounds will become familiar too.

“Nicolò.”

Not a Frank then.

“Why are you alone Nicolò?” Yusuf asks.

Nicolò's pale face turns greyer, when he speaks it's halting and roughly spoken.

“I didn't come here for this, I know- I know- _I know,_ god won't forgive me, but I won't- I can't- I don't know what to do. They're killing everyone.” His head drops, fresh tears running down his face as his sword points hits the ground.

Yusuf wonders how such an idiot ended up here, what paths were taken to lead him to this exact moment. Then, it doesn't matter. His sword arms as good as any mans, and Yusuf could use him, if he speaks truly.

“Will you help me?” He asks, desperate as a scream sounds out of the smoke, close and terrified.

“What can I do?” Nicolò looks up, eyes wet and full of terrible emotions. “Tell me, please. _Please._ ”

Was there a place in the world for a soft-hearted man who killed with such brutal decisiveness? Was there a place for himself, hands still longing for soft charcoal and thick parchment even as the blood gets harder and harder to scrub from the lines in his palms?

Maybe that was for scholars a millenia from now to decide.

Now is for the heartbreak and need to _do something_ reflecting from Yusuf's eyes to the man that fate has tied him to.

“We can't stop them.”

Nicolò flinches, but his mouth flattens to a hard line, lips flattening and curling downwards, but he nods.

“But we can kill any who cross us,” Yusuf says, watching the crusader carefully for signs that might end with that long sword in his back again. “And we can save who we can.”

Nicolò swallows, and Yusuf watches his tear streaked face harden, as he responds with a resolute nod. “Save who we can.”

It's a good look on him; better than the cold, dead look that he'd had slaying men on the battlefield, or the shattered devastation he'd had since the siege broke and Jerusalem fell.

The night becomes a long never ending moment of searing fire, choking on smoke and deafened from screams. Bloody mud pulls at their ankles as they fight their way clear of the city, the very few survivors they come across huddled terrified and silent behind them as they cut down anyone who stands in their path.

Jerusalem burns behind them.

The first month out, walking away, is a blur.

They part ways with the refugees as soon as it is safe to do so, leaving what meager supplies they had managed to scrounge with the broken men, dead eyed women and grim faced children that made up their unhappy pack of survivors.

Yusuf watches their retreating shapes along the rocky horizon, not for the first time praying he hasn't made a mistake choosing to continue on with Nicolò. But the crusader's pale looks had kept the survivors on edge no matter how Nicolò presented himself and Yusuf had to give credit to the crusader, he'd at least had the good sense to keep himself scarce, quiet and scouting out, taking hostile looks and words with perhaps more grace than Yusuf might have expected from an invader.

The days after they part ways are long and sparse, hot and draining in a way the deserts in the south of his homeland had never been. Yusuf's throat feels as if the entire sands of _T_ _énéré_ had run through it, he swears he can taste blood in the air each time he breathes.

Maybe they can't die but this wasting away feels like being devoured from within, like a slow moving horror, a lumbering thing with no haste, sure in it's inevitability.

“There is water, just to the east, not far,” Yusuf says to the man who walks beside him, but also to himself, a mantra, something to keep each foot fall following the next. He prays he isn't lying, prays that he has understood the traveler's signs that lead them this way.

Nicolò succumbs to thirst first, his swaying gait for the past several hours finally ends with a stumble that dehydrated as he is, Yusuf may have not even noticed if not for the fact that Nicolò brushes past him on his way to meet the ground.

Yusuf stares at his prone form for longer than he cares to admit, exhaustion and the days of nothing to drink or eat taking its toll on his mind.

Finally he tries to lean down, but the throbbing in his head has him dropping to his knees beside Nicolò. It seems to take a herculean amount of effort to roll him over, Yusuf pants for breath, each intake of air feeling like knives in his dry, dry throat.

Dying of thirst is an ugly death, Yusuf thinks, as Nicolò stares at him from severely sunken in eyes. A sluggish trickle of blood runs down from where he's gashed his head open on the only rock in front of them.

Nicolò licks at his lips uselessly as Yusuf maneuvers his head into the shelter of his lap, his mouth moving but whatever words he's speaking rasp out so quiet they may as well be soundless.

 _The bloods not stopping,_ Yusuf thinks dumbly, and he wipes at it with his thumb; the cut below jagged edged but shallow. And yet blood still seeps from it. Yusuf wipes at it again.

And again.

And again.

The wound still bleeds. Nicolò's eyes drift from side to side, unseeing.

Something sharp and hurting wells up in Yusuf's chest.

Is this how it ends? As pointless and senseless as these past months have been?

Yusuf won't be far behind, already his mind fogs as his energy drains more and more.

Are they to be just another set of sun bleached bones picked cleaned in the wilderness? Passed by without a second thought? No one to ever know their story or what became of them?

“ _D_ _on_ _'t_ _die, you fr_ _a_ _nk son of a bitch,_ ” he demands in the language of his home, “ _don_ _'_ _t you fucking die._ ”

Nicolò blinks, his eyes finally seeming to focus, staring up at Yusuf.

Then he dies.

Yusuf stares at him for a long long time. He can't seem to make himself move. If he doesn't get up he'll die too, he knows this.

(he may die anyway)

But he can't force himself to stand, can't let Nicolò's head lay among the rocks and sand just yet. He's the only one Yusuf has that knows of, that shares his immortality, if he's truly gone, then Yusuf is alone in this.

It's impossible.

It must be.

His head dips, lowers til his forehead brushes Nicolò's. Yusuf is praying before he realizes it. He doesn't know what Allah makes of him praying for the life of a heathen, but His love is unmatched, surely he couldn't mean to leave Yusuf alone like this?

 _Please_. He prays, desperate thought he doesn't know why. _Please_.

Nicolò almost headbutts him as he comes gasping violently back to life.

Yusuf tumbles backwards, laughing hysterically, more of a choking noise than anything else. Nicolò blinks at him, a confused wrinkle between his eyebrows.

Yusuf basks in the unlikeliness of being glad this Frank is alive, gloriously back to life, then he feels his head swim, a wave of dizziness takes him down, darkness fills his vision and he thinks oh, _oh_ , I am dying.

He wakes to gentleness. Cool, _cool_ water drips against his dried lips, dribbles into his mouth and wets his parched throat.

Something soft and damp gently wipes at the grit on his face, over his closed eyes, across the hollows of his cheeks.

Yusuf opens his eyes as he feels life and his breath come back with a long deep gasp. Hands hold him steady, gentle but not restricting, Nicolò above him, mirroring the way Yusuf had held him as he'd succumbed.

Nicolò shifts, the cloth leaving Yusuf's skin, followed by the sound of sloshing water, then the cloth is returned, wetter, dripping a path of cool water across Yusuf's skin.

There's still blood smudged across his forehead, Yusuf realizes; struck with a sudden unlikely fear, he lifts an uncoordinated hand up, roughly swipes at the dried blood on Nicolò's face just to see the unblemished, healed skin beneath it. His hand drops, not knowing what to do with the deep relief that he hadn't expected to feel.

Yusuf looks around, swallowing around the sudden lump in his throat that has nothing to do with dying of thirst. They're camped in the meager shade of a well's bricked walls, the well's bucket sitting cool and close against Nicolò's thigh. Nicolò's sitting over him, the side of his forehead pressed against brickwork, eyes half closed but watching Yusuf intently as he continues his ministrations.

“Where?” He croaks, somehow he feeling worse for all that he's been revived from death. He feels wrung out, hollowed somehow.

Nicolò looks at him with a crease between his brows, _the water_ he says, _it was where you said_ , his hands don't stop even as his voice cracks, _we were so close._

Dry lips crack, shining red splits as Nicolò smiles, perhaps the least restrained smile Yusuf has ever seen from Nicolò, it's directed down on him and Yusuf does not understand this man at all.

  
  


Once they recover and move on they don't speak much beyond quiet murmurs and gestures. Nicolò pulls a torn length of cloth from his tunic and wears it draped over his head, protection from the harsh sun, it hangs low over his eyes as he spends many of the long hours with his head bowed low. Yusuf watches those curved shoulders with varying degrees of emotions, ranging from an odd sort of fondness to heartsick weariness to eyeing the sharp angles of Nicolò's shoulder blades and telling himself that burying his _saif_ between them wouldn't solve anything.

He doesn't truly want to, Yusuf thinks, his anger hasn't burned down to ashes yet, but it's not the roaring fire that had burned him for so long either.

Nicolò doesn't seem to have anything to add in those first quiet weeks, he says little, follows Yusuf's lead but watches him with piercing eyes set deep into the darkening circles.

Nicolò didn't take anything with him when he came with Yusuf, didn't seem inclined to seek out and retrieve any trinkets or beloved objects he might have carried with him, left back in the crusader camp. Instead he stared for a very long time at the long sword at his feet, his face an unreadable storm cloud, before picking it up and strapping it back to his waist. He looked to Yusuf as he finished tightening his belt, but where Yusuf had expected to see defiance, there'd just been a strange searching look. Like if Yusuf had objected to the sword, maybe he'd have dropped it back into the mud.

But a sword was just a sword and they were more than likely to find trouble on the way to wherever they were headed, Yusuf wouldn't see the man unarmed when the time came to fight. So he'd said nothing, just watched those piercing eyes for any sign that he planned on running Yusuf through again.

He can't imagine an entire people blindly following and believing a single man who claimed to speak with the voice of God.

Nicolò takes Yusuf calling him on his ignorance with more grace than Yusuf thinks he'd take the reality of everything he'd been taught to believe being lies.

But maybe wading knee deep in blood and viscera for days on end, and being told that the promised salvation could only be found by bringing hell to the lives of innocent was a harsh but sure awakening.

Yusuf's anger shifts to those that stirred up the glory of death and murder and the teaching of hate, that spoke lies and led so many souls to their ends.

Those that had brought Yusuf to this place and killed a part of him as surely as Nicolò's blade had that first time. Just as surely as it had killed Nicolò, reforging him into the man Yusuf is getting to know.

(later, many years later, he'll weep for the Nicolò he never got to know, he'll love the man before him no less, but something within him will gnash its teeth for the loss of what he never knew. Had he smiled big and easy before he'd had to hold young men's faith and guts in the aftermath of battle, as they drowned on their last breaths, before leaving them in the sand only to suffer the same over and over again?

No, Nicolò will tell him in the dark, words whispered to the hands held in his own, his breath warm, his words quiet. He'd been a solemn child and an awkward youth, then a no less awkward young man with the same hesitance to speak. The crusade had merely taught him that he needed to speak even less, had taught him the importance of observing and learning for himself the world's truths. He had to be better.

It's a sticking point centuries later, his kind eyed Nicolò, selfless in his desire to redeem himself, to gain the forgiveness that Yusuf has already granted years back.

But then is not now, and wounds that will eventually turn to pale lines, soft with age, are still open bloody things with ragged edges.)

Now Yusuf gets to know Nicolò the man. They maybe have both kept their silence for that first week, both lost in their own thoughts, but slowly, like the rising sun, they seem to awaken from their silent stupor.

Slowly Yusuf gets to know that behind the haunted look they'd both carried since Jerusalem Nicolò still has the hungry eyes of street urchin. Yusuf had presumed that moving away from the battlefields would have lessened the look, but instead that hunted look had remained even as small, hesitant smiles started appearing.

He finds himself wanting to know why, then steadily as they share the words they don't know in each others languages, he finds himself wanting to know every detail he can think to ask. Nicolò seems no different, questioning Yusuf on every topic that comes to mind.

Speech comes slow, then steadily grows to conversation, as if the further they find themselves away from the battlefield, the more they are released from a weight that had been crushing them both.

Nicolò speaks with the sound of one of the city states that dotted the north coasts of the Ligurian Sea. Yusuf isn't as fluent in the dialect he speaks as he was in the languages closer to home, but with the trade language they both partially speak, Yusuf understood and knew enough words to muddle together an understanding; far more words than Nicolò knew of Yusuf's tongue, which seemed limited to _peace, water_ and _horse._

“You are not from here?” Nicolò asks, then listens intently as Yusuf sketches with words the sprawling coastline he'd been born and grew up on. There's a sad sort of yearning on Nicolò's face when Yusuf's done, the same sort of feeling that swells in Yusuf's chest thinking of home.

Can he go home? Can the sun that warms his face in memories only ever be remembered but not felt again? Will he remain deathless and ageless? Will the salt he swears he can still taste from a youth of seaspray and sand ever experienced the same again?

There's no answer.

“What did you do?” Nicolò asks, unaware of Yusuf's inner turmoil and Yusuf gladly moves away from such thoughts.

“Merchant,” he says to Nicolò's curious face, “I was trading when you burnt my boat and stranded me here.”

Sometimes he will say something purposefully aggravating just to see Nicolò's face turn red as he struggles to hold in a retort, and Nicolò never disappoints, pink spreading across his cheekbones, darkening to a deep sunburned red at the very tips of his ears.

He shouldn't enjoy this man's company, he thinks, but, away from the constant death and misery, by Allah, he does.

And so they pass the time and walk on.

In the next large town they find a moment of respite, they're not quite far enough from the crusader's path that Nicolò wasn't eyed with some distrust, butit seemed far enough that life still continued onwards as though no town had been burnt and sacked by marauding Christians.

They're barely a step up from beggars with their travel worn garb and the sad state of their shoes, they trade a pallet in a stable and a warm meal for a days work, leverage the strength of their arms and the quality of their work with the jovial shopkeep for extra supplies for when they move on.

They don't talk about where they're going, but they've come to a silent agreement to head for the coast, find the first ship that's sailing away. Yusuf contemplates the memory of the shining stone spires and domes of Constantinople, though he hasn't walked those shores since he first began to travel and trade.

A pair, such as they are, could get lost in the masses in a city like that.

At night he dreams of riding a horse, galloping through long grass, the strong grip of another's hand in his, long dark hair curling in the wind and the soft _sfft_ of an arrow loosed.

He wakes with the phantom ache of a long fight in his muscles, beside him Nicolò is wakening, blinking long and slow.

Nicolò's fingers shift as if remembering a bowstring between them.

Their eyes meet and Yusuf is struck by the knowledge that they have shared this dream.

_Have you?_

_The first time we died._

_Not often since._

“Are they like us, you think?” Nicolò asks in an ambiguous tone. Yusuf can not read the placid look on his face, can't tell whether he'd be pleased that they shared their affliction with more people, or upset about it.

“We could find them and know for sure?” Yusuf does not know how he feels about finding new immortals. But the idea that they may not be alone in this, that there could be sense found in it, regardless of answers, he thinks he would at the very least like to meet the women that live and die in the shades of his dreams.

Nicolò nods with a solemn look, rolling on his back, his elbow brushing against Yusuf's. He stares at the wooden beams that hold the roof up for a long time, the beginning of the day's light filtering through the cracks and Yusuf stares at his strong profile lit by that soft glow.

Nicolò turns his head back to Yusuf, his eyes struck almost colorless in the beams of morning sun, the edges of them crinkle with the barest hint of a smile.

“East, then?”

Yusuf nods, thinking of the lush greenery that framed his dreams, the unfamiliar mountain ranges that blurred in the background, the shape of the dark haired woman's sharp smiling eyes. East was as good a guess as any direction.

Though they have a long way to go, Yusuf is glad their days of wandering aimlessly is coming to an end. A plan, as ill formed and freshly birthed as it is, gives him a renewed sense of meaning. Something to do.

“ _As-salam alaykum_ ,” Nicolò greets big eyed children in dirty rags, going down on one knee and fumbling in his robes for a moment before bringing out a handful of little, shriveled up apples.

Yusuf recognizes them as the last of wizened apples from the orchards near the wells, still sweet despite their age, barely getting a glimpse of them before they're snatched up. The entire group of children scatter in a dead run the moment the apples disappear into their possession, afraid the freely given food contained strings that hungry children too often were caught in.

Smart kids.

Perhaps some will live to see hair on their chins, though Yusuf suspects more will die than live before the year is out. Life in these war torn lands was unkind with very little protection for the weak.

He tells Nicolò so as he watches the children disappear into the streets, a strange look on his face.

Not anger, or perhaps a different sort of anger than Yusuf is used to. It's a serious look that deepens the tired bruises circling his eyes.

His eyes meet Yusuf's, scanning his face as though searching for something before shrugging, “Perhaps, but this is all I have.”

Yusuf hates this man with a passion that no longer feels anything like hate.

Nicolò's hand appears again, palm up with a single little apple offered towards Yusuf,

“Last one?” he asks, he offers; one last apple offered like Shaytan in the garden and Yusuf suddenly and completely understands the theological quandary of forbidden fruit better than the years of his Imam's teaching ever could.

Yusuf looks past the fruit held on an outstretched hand to the shy look in Nicolò's eye, though how he manages the guileless look when Yusuf has seen this man with blood and gore caked in every pore, Yusuf does not know and he's long given up denying how much it endears Nicolò to him.

He wants to say yes to questions he doesn't think Nicolò will ever ask.

Yusuf takes the apple, an eye cast heavenward in thanks that at the very least they hadn't raided a vineyard for fruit back the wells, he's not sure his heart could have taken the irony.

He makes quick work of quartering the fruit, and offers the pieces back, his turn to search Nicolò's face, the feeling he is heading towards something builds and builds and Yusuf prays to Allah that Nicolò is going the same way.

“ _Shukran.”_ Nicolò murmurs as he takes back a piece of offered apple, his Arabic is still limited but something warms in Yusuf with the effort he puts into trying.

They're back on the trail coastwards when Yusuf sees them. First from the corner of his eye, as movement and recognition of the cut of their grubby clothing, the paleness of their features, the harsh cadence of their words, and his heart drops in his chest. This far out, on one of the few watered trails between sea and Jerusalem, any band of soldiers would spill blood before bothering to speak.

Nicolò is moving almost before Yusuf can call out an alarm.

Allah, he's fast, sword already out and moving, steel flashing in the day's sun.

This is what he gets for trusting, he thinks, expecting – _waiting_ _for_ _–_ the, by now, almost familiar bite of Nicolò's longsword.

At least it'll likely be a clean death. Nicolò strikes as surely as a viper, but never cruelly.

(Yusuf has never seen one so ill-suited for priesthood, or maybe, it was everyone else that shamed the cloth)

They've done it like this before, played the foes they once were to pass marauding bands of crusaders and Arabs both.

But.

Somewhere between the time that Nicolò's pale hand had clasped Yusuf's offered one and that same hand pressing against breast to emphasize the spoken _Nicolò,_ Yusuf's desire to see the christian slain has waned from hesitance to outright distaste.

He hopes - _hopes and hopes -_ Nicolò feels the same.

After this time, this death, perhaps he will try and speak the words he can feel building in his chest.

But no steel finds his flesh.

Instead Nicolò falls upon the crusaders his longsword swinging in a mighty arc that slices the first man shoulder to belly, deep red blood and white bone flashing as he falls and Nicolò moves just as sure as he had at the gates of Jerusalem that fateful day.

There's only a few of them, surprise is on their side, and Nicolò is brutally efficient.

Yusuf cuts through the last one intending on put his sword through Nicolò's back, Yusuf forgotten beforeNicolò's fierce attack.

Nicolò pivots on his heel, his long sword flying in a graceful arc that heads straight for Yusuf standing in the place of the man he'd just slain.

Nicolò's footing stumbles as he jerks the blade away, redirecting it in an awkward over extended swing that avoids Yusuf's face by mere inches.

“ _Santa Maria madre di dios.”_ Nicolò lets out a heavy breath – _relief_? - chest heaving, panting big gulps of air.

It's so still so odd for Yusuf, that they heal from any ail but still struggle for breath after exertion.

Nicolò's eyes are wide with emotion as he leans heavily on his sword.

Horror, Yusuf realizes, pulling his sword free from the man between them.

“ _Bene_?” Nicolò calls out, loud, demanding.

Good? A strange declaration to make after slaughtering maybe not his countrymen, but men wearing the same colors Nicolò once sported.

“Yusuf!” Nicolò's eyes turn sharp, searching Yusuf, roaming over his body before those piercing eyes meet Yusuf's again. “ _Stai bene?”_

Oh.

_Oh._

“ _Bikha_ _i_ _r, alhamdulillah._ ” Yusuf answers breathlessly, crouching low to wipe his blade clean on the dead man's tunic. Keeps an eye on Nicolò to watch the twitch between his eyebrows. His Arabic is better than it was when they first started traveling, but the frown he makes in the moment between hearing and translation gives Yusuf a special sort of feeling, a small joy he'd like to one day share with the man he travels with.

But not yet, he thinks. What he feels for his companion builds in his chest, growing leviathan like with each small moment, but he fears, oh, he fears moving to fast, uncovering an ember before it has a chance to catch flame to the harsh winds of reality.

“I would not see you hurt by my blade.” Nicolò says to the ground in front of him, studying the sand as if deep in thought. “Not anymore. Not again.”

A man so covered in blood, a man so acquainted with death – with the art of killing, with the grim reality of killing – he should not look so kind, He should not _be_ so kind.

His feet are moving before thought and Yusuf is in Nicolò's space, free hand rising with the need to touch. He's too close too soon, he knows this, they're both warriors, blood still roaring in their ears and drying on their skin, moving so suddenly could so easily result in a blade between his ribs, instinct overriding any amount of soft words.

But Yusuf is beyond thought, can barely hold himself back from actually cradling Nicolò's face in his hands, restrains himself to merely framing his jaw, his hand just barely not touching.

“It is the same.” Yusuf says, quiet but steady and Nicolò's chin tilts up, tilts towards Yusuf, and then Nicolò is moving.

Yusuf doesn't flinch, feet held impossibly still, all thought of instinct fleeing, if Nicolò means to kill him once more for the imposition, then he'll go gladly knowing he didn't return the favor.

But there's no cold bite of steel, no hot blood flowing from rent skin.

Instead warm lips press against his.

First with startling softness, then harder as the courage and recklessness that Yusuf has witnessed many times on the battlefield kicks in.

Yusuf's sword drops from his hand, clattering on rocky ground - loud in the sudden silence - and Nicolò jerks back as if burnt.

Yusuf's hands hover empty in the space between them as he takes in Nicolò, his spine ramrod straight, body held still to the point of trembling. Waiting, Yusuf realizes, expecting a blow and accepting its inevitability anyway.

This time he does touch, hands both free to reach out, to hold, gentle on that sharp jawline, gentle on the thumping pulse beneath soft thin skin.

“It's the same,” Yusuf says again, gentle and slow, in Nicolò's mother tongue, “For me, it is the same.”

Haifa is a small of enough port that it's been largely ignored by the invading Franks, but it's still big enough that ships are sailing in and out regularly. Yusuf splits with Nicolò he heads to the port in hopes of finding passage on a ship that'll take them northwards, leaving Nicolò to source them supplies for the next few days at least.

The port is overflowing with people, traders and refugees, bustling more than Yusuf has ever seen it. There's an odd feeling of simultaneous dread and relief in the air. As if the fall of Jerusalem placed the city on theblade of a knife, teetering towards total destruction or the end of the campaign, the entire place holding it's breath to see which way the axe would fall.

He doesn't manage to find them a place on a ship heading north, but finds a captain that given a few days of Yusuf's charms may be swayed to take on some extra sets of hands across the Red Sea to 'Aydhab.

He leaves the port in search of Nicolò, not entirely feeling accomplished, but at least having a semblence of a plan half forming before him.

Yusuf finally catches sight of Nicolò in the crowded markets, near a food stall, steaming with the mouthwatering aromas of good food and the sort good natured atmosphere that went with it.

The older women running the stalls surround Nicolò, talking loud and rapidly but as Yusuf get closer it sounds friendly enough. Nicolò, a full head taller than the tallest woman, is listening intently, his face an interesting mix between bemused listening and harried concentration.

His Arabic is poor but earnest when he answers back. Head bowed low, Nicolò didn't cut as an intimidating figure as he had garbed in chainmail and light armor, dressed in traveler's robes, broad shoulders curled in on themselves, he looked more like a pilgrim, fleeing the violence.

“Yusuf!” Nicolò calls as soon as he catches sight of him, his face lighting up as if the sun rose with Yusuf's presence. He murmurs apologies and _thankyous_ as he disengages himself from the women and heads towards Yusuf, closing the distance til his arms brushes against Yusuf's.

“They say,” he frowns as if going over the words he'd been told, “They say the men we met, the crusaders? They're not the only ones raiding the smaller towns. ”

“That's not surprising, many deserted on their way to the holy city, for less noble reasons than you.” Yusuf answers, thinking more than few uncharitable thoughts about those men.

Nicolò is silent for a long moment -Yusuf's companion is a quiet sort, but he listens keenly to the cadence of Yusuf's words, his mouth curling around unfamiliar vowels til the sounds he makes almost matches what he heard - then he nods to himself, decisively.

“Could we,” he pauses, Nicolò is the master of subtle expressions - the wrinkle that appears between his brow, the slight shift of his lips as he chews on the inside of his mouth - Nicolò might be one of the hardest to read people that he has ever met, but these past months have given Yusuf a doctorate in reading him.

Nicolò's embarrassed - hesitant and shy - these past months on the road with Yusuf have been a far gentler teacher than that fateful bloody day in Jerusalem but he still shies away from any of the nicer words Yusuf sends in his direction.

“We could stop them.”

“Stop them?” Yusuf doesn't ask for clarification to be unkind, they've been making their way northeast, in hopes of finding lands that match the dreams they share of two women living and dying and living again while carving their way through lush green landscapes, to stray is to chance losingany answers they might hold.

“I think it is right. If we can, we should, _I_ should,” Nicolò looks down at his hands, flexing them before looking back up to Yusuf with a steady look, “These people should be able to live their lives in peace.”

Yusuf feels the muscle in his chest weaken before those sea glass eyes, he is lost and prays never to be found.

He knows it is too soon to reach out and touch out in the open as they are, sudden movements makes the man skittish despite how steady his sword arm is in the heat of battle. But one day, Yusuf thinks, one day he will take this man in his arms in the broad light of day and make his eyes alight for all the world to see.

“Then we will make it so.”

“And the women?” Nicolò's eye bore into Yusuf's. “You are fine with postponing our search for them?”

The lands he glimpses in his dreams are unfamiliar, but since Yusuf had first started dreaming of them, their movements had changed from a gentle meandering to a pace that seemed pointed and purposeful; if Yusuf was a betting man, he wouldn't wager on their direction being anything but an arrow straight towards him and Nicolò.

“I think we'll find them when it is time.”

Nicolò nods, his lips compressing, eyes breaking away as creases appear in their corners in a delicate almost smile.

Yusuf doesn't know how to tell him that he might do just about anything Nicolò asked him to, even if the man seems very determined to ask for so very little, and even rarer, ask things for himself.

Maybe they were born for this, Yusuf thinks as he and Nicolò gather what little they have in way of belongings, preparing to head back out into the desert, as much as he wants to find answers from the women they see in their dreams, he agrees that things like this could take precedence.

Maybe this would be how they spent their many, innumerable days.

Both of them seem content to continue moving, driven to see new things, if they can do some good, help out in what little way they can along the way, was that not enough. Was there an answer, or an explanation for their immortality that would change things?

Nicolò spoke gravely of destiny, a shy ducking of his head with the words, and perhaps several months past Yusuf might have found cause for anger; invoking destiny to explain the why and how Nicolò came to these lands. But now he wonders.

Both of them born to cities sprawled along the ocean's edge, one foot always on the deck of a ship, made with a need to travel beating beneath their ribs, as if they knew all along their heart resided over the expanse of blue.

Both of them, unknowing of what they were, walking the unlikely paths that inevitably brought them to clash violently and terribly together.

Yusuf's stayed hand.

Nicolò taking his offered peace on that worst of days.

A new connection, a new direction, a new life.

Maybe it was a destiny, written by Allah, or in the stars or justly forged by the beating of their hearts.


End file.
